Our Mission

The Mission of the Institute is to provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense.

Following the success of his first book about a U.S. Navy flight crew's desperate battle to survive a 1978 ditching in the icy north Pacific, Andrew Jampoler has turned to an equally exciting Navy adventure set in the desert of Ottoman Syria more than one hundred fifty years ago. Ordered to fix the exact elevation of the Dead Sea and to collect scientific specimens, the expedition was the Navy's first and last to the storied salt lake of the Old Testament. The expedition's leader, Lt. William Lynch, was at once a coolly scientific and a devoutly religious man who hoped to find the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah and sustain the Book of Genesis account of the cities' destruction. Drawing on his extensive research in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, the author presents not only first-time details of the expedition but also sets the expedition into a colorful context of biblical story and of the great events of the mid-nineteenth century that included global epidemic disease, political revolution in Europe, the collapse of Ottoman imperial rule, and the secularization of America. He also offers a taste of Navy life at sea during a decade when sail began to give way to steam.

Readers join Lynch and his men as they launch two small boats on the Sea of Galilee at Tiberias to run the Jordan rapids and then plumb the depths of the Dead Sea while members of the shore party and their Arab escorts follow along on camels and horseback. Officers and sailors alike believed that every previous expedition had been stricken by killing disease or assaulted by murderous desert tribes, but specially selected volunteers were prepared to suffer on a mission as much about religion as science. A sea story of unusual dimensions, their adventure has secured a permanent place in history thanks to Jampoler's skillful recounting of events large and small.

Andrew C.A. Jampoler, a retired naval aviator and former commanding officer of Patrol Squadron 19 and of Naval Air Station Moffett Field, is also the author of Adak and The Last Lincoln Conspirator.

Andrew Jampoler is the award-winning author of The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows and Adak: The Rescue of Alfa Foxtrot 586. A resident of Loudoun County, VA, he spent more than twenty years in the U.S. Navy and later was a marketing executive in the international aerospace industry.

More by this Author

SAILORS IN THE HOLY LAND

Following the success of his first book about a U.S. Navy flight crew's desperate battle to... Read More

THE LAST LINCOLN CONSPIRATOR

Despite all that has been written about the April 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln,... Read More

THE LAST LINCOLN CONSPIRATOR

With all that has already been written about President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, one of... Read More

HORRIBLE SHIPWRECK!

On August 25, 1833, the British convict transport Amphitrite, filled with more than one hundred... Read More

Related Content

Who Was Henry Eckford?

One Scotsman's contributions to the construction of fighting ships in the War of 1812 and through... Read More

Museum Report

Former Foes' Naval History on Display
Both Madrid and Istanbul boast navy museums—the Museo... Read More

America's Amazon Adventure

Three U.S. naval officers had designs on scouting out the untamed Amazon River basin, but... Read More

'A Ditching None Could Expect to Survive'

At the height of the Cold War, an unlikely coalition of aircraft from the Coast Guard, the Navy,... Read More